Gruber’s moronic excuse to TNR, that he committed a “speak-o” while rambling through a Q&A, obviously doesn’t work for this one. Which makes me wonder: Did he knowingly lie to TNR or has he somehow convinced himself that he never believed that only state exchanges would be eligible for ObamaCare subsidies? The answer doesn’t matter insofar as the quotes are damaging either way to the left’s bogus “drafting error” theory for what happened in the parts of O-Care at issue in the Halbig case, but I’m amused by how he’s painted himself into a corner now. His choices are ‘fessing up to lying, probably by admitting that yes, okay, he did at one point believe that only state exchanges would be eligible but has since changed his mind, or basically saying, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” Mind you, this is the guy whom the media routinely credits as having all but drafted the ObamaCare statute.

In lieu of an exit question, I’m setting the over/under on the final total of damaging Gruber soundbites to emerge at four. Place your bets.

Gruber told The New Republic [after the first video clip emerged] that he had made a mistake.

“I was speaking off-the-cuff. It was just a mistake. People make mistakes. Congress made a mistake drafting the law and I made a mistake talking about it,” Gruber told The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn. “But there was never any intention to literally withhold money, to withhold tax credits, from the states that didn’t take that step. That’s clear in the intent of the law and if you talk to anybody who worked on the law. My subsequent statement was just a speak-o—you know, like a typo.”

A second recording has surfaced showing Gruber making similar statements about subsidies not being available on federally run exchanges. Asked over email whether those remarks were a mistake, too, Gruber wrote back, “same answer.”

He wasn’t speaking off the cuff in the second clip, though. It obviously wasn’t a speak-o/typo. This is him basically saying “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

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You people just don’t understand that what Gruber said is not what he really said and what you thought you heard is not really what he said but it is really what he meant which you didn’t really understand. And besides you are all racists and hate immigrants.

“Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principle know as the Rule of Law. Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand

…

In fact, as planning becomes more and more extensive, it becomes regularly necessary to qualify legal provisions increasingly by reference to what is “fair” or “reasonable”; this means that it becomes necessary to leave the decision of the concrete case more and more to the discretion of the judge or authority in question.”

— “The Road to Serfdom” – Hayek
Chapter 6: Planning and the Rule of Law

I have been gone for 3 hours and Ned has failed to answer my questions, I guess he is ok to have Obama as his Lord, Savior and King wrapped up into one. Leftists have to worship a human since they are atheists. I bet Ned has never had to enroll in obama care and he gets his insurance through his job.

Gruber’s got a bit of a problem – apparently he signed amicus briefs in support of the Administration’s interpretation (according to Jonathan Turley), so, what’s the law on that? How close is it to perjury?

Turn MD Red on July 25, 2014 at 4:16 PM

A knowingly false, sworn affidavit filed in a case can subject one to a perjury charge. But, pleadings (such as this amicus filing) are not “verified” routinely. It doesn’t mean he didn’t lie, only that he can’t go to jail for it. And, he’s not a party so it wouldn’t affect the underlying suit or parties to it.

[Note the IRS courts asking for specific statements to be filed “under oath” by the government. This would trigger perjury exposure. Otherwise, no. It’s the oath that counts.]

But, if these public statements from one who was under contract to the drafters of the legislation (and thus, a form of “agent”) can be considered by courts adjudicating the meaning of the Act itself, I’ll take it. I’m more worried about Obama than I am about Gruber.

But, if these public statements from one who was under contract to the drafters of the legislation (and thus, a form of “agent”) can be considered by courts adjudicating the meaning of the Act itself, I’ll take it. I’m more worried about Obama than I am about Gruber.

IndieDogg on July 25, 2014 at 6:05 PM

I think you may hot the nail on the head. If Gruber “consulted” with the dems as they claim, his statements can be considered under legislative intent. They were touting him as one of the key drafters of this legislation and he stated the intent of that legislation.

He was born on September 30, 1965. He completed his BS in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 and his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1992 with thesis titled Changes in the Structure of Employer-Provided Health Insurance. He began his career as an assistant professor of economics at MIT. Currently,[clarification needed] he is a professor of economics at MIT. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

I read somewhere today, the courts can’t consider this when ruling on the case. The fact is that someone is going into the court and lying about this being an error, it wasn’t an error it was planned, this is proof it was planned, why can’t the courts hear this?

Why aren’t the Republicans on the attack on this. The Democratic Party played fast and loose with the countries health care system and the Republicans aren’t advertising it. Since I seldom watch any of the alphabet networks, I have no clue what their newscasts are covering but, if history is any judge, they’re not reporting this at all.

The President lied about it, the Democrats lied about it, and the President broke the law changing it. These, to me at least, are undeniable facts. This has all been done so Republicans can’t have any input into this legislation and Pravda and Izvestia are letting them get away with it.

Chief Justice John Roberts realized that in 2012 when he ruled the individual mandate constitutional. All evidence suggests he didn’t want to rule the mandate constitutional. But he thought it would harm the Court to do otherwise.

Look, the law is obvious. The facts are obvious. The real question is political …. is that creep John Roberts going to betray us again? And why don’t conservative judges vote their politics the way that liberal judges do? That’s the real question. That’s where we should be putting pressure.

The Times says “It’s absurd to argue that a Congress controlled by Democrats would have imposed a nationwide mandate to buy coverage while withholding subsidies from some states’ residents.”

But that’s exactly what the Democrats did. They wanted to force Republican-controlled states to build exchanges, so they built into the law clauses designed to politically punish Republicans who failed to do so. They expected the electorate to punish states which failed to establish exchanges; instead, nothing of the sort happened.

If the Democrats really wanted subsidies for all, they would not have mandated that purchases be performed through a state-run exchange. The bald political assumptions of the law are there even for the Times Editor to see.

Remember the Medicaid expansion part of the law that was struck down (even by liberal justice Breyer)? I wonder how the subsidies could be seen to relate to the Medicaid expansion and how states which declined to expand the program would be cut off from additional funding. The argument that the Fed. gov’t surely wouldn’t have wanted to purposely exclude millions and millions of people from subsidized, affordable health insurance or punish whole States is clearly bogus as we already have precedent from other (struck down, unconstitutional) parts of the law.

What if SCOTUS blows up the entire subsidy issue altogether? Not only that citizens of States which refused to set up exchanges cannot receive subsidies but that the unequal distribution of subsidies as written in the law is unconstitutional?

The Times says “It’s absurd to argue that a Congress controlled by Democrats would have imposed a nationwide mandate to buy coverage while withholding subsidies from some states’ residents.”

Wait, is that the “nationwide mandate” that Obama delayed by fiat after threatening to veto a GOP bill that would have done the same thing? Following some 14 “exemptions” issued by HHS? That “nationwide mandate?” Obamacare is certainly replete with absurdities, but the plain and obvious meaning of “State,” as used in Sec. 1311(b) of Obamacare, isn’t among them.

The Supremes will pick up this case and Roberts will rule correctly this time. In fact — just a hunch — it will be lopsided, perhaps unanimous, and not a strictly partisan vote.

This time, the interpretive aspects are missing. What the law says and means is crystal clear and is unambiguous, and more, we now know with certainty that the clear and unambiguous law in question was what was intended by the authors of the bill.

Ruling that the language of the law only affords subsidies to Obamacare participants in state-run exchanges does not invalidate or set aside the law. It simply screws over the very enrollees the bill was intended to help. The law will be clarified and thusly upheld.